This is the best book ever printed about building wind turbines from scratch, in a home workshop! It's an essential in any wind power enthusiast's reference library. It's not intended to serve as detailed "plans" for building your turbine -- for that check out Hugh's Axial Flux Alternator Windmill Plans, also for sale by Forcefield. This volume is intended to serve as a starting point for designing your own wind turbine project. Hugh covers multiple different blade, alternator, and furling system designs here, and lists the pros and cons of each. He's designed, built and flown hundreds of wind turbines worldwide over the last 20 years, and his emphasis is on sturdy, reliable systems that won't fail under the harshest conditions. The book is loaded with detailed diagrams, charts, and photos.

Chapters include The Wind - A Wild Resource, Safety, Rotor Design, Blade Making, Generators, Mechanical Controls, Electrical Controls, Towers, a Glossary, and Windpower Equations with worked examples. He thoroughly covers all turbine configurations, including Upwind, downwind, and vertical-axis designs. You'll learn how to design and carve a blade to a specific Tip Speed Ratio, and how to choose the right number of blades. The Generators section covers many possible choices, ranging from home-built Permanent Magnet Alternators, modified vehicle alternators, DC motors, axial vs. radial designs, multi-phase vs. single phase (and how and why they are wired and used). The Mechanical Controls section covers numerous different furling systems that protect the turbine from high wind speeds, with details and formulas on designing a gravity-operated furling tail. He discusses electrical controls in details, including star-delta switching and shunt regulation into a dump load. The Towers section contains detailed information on how to design and build a SAFE tilt-up tower, and how to fabricate the tower base, guy wire anchors and gin pole.

Current Reviews: 3

This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 28 December, 2004.

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Jan 1st 2012 - Due to the acquisition of Forcefield by Amazing Magnets, we have temporarily disabled purchasing on the forcefield.com shopping cart. For immediate needs for magnets please visit www.AmazingMagnets.com. For wind power products visit www.OtherPower.com.